China is to implement a controversial cybersecurity law tomorrow, despite concerns from foreign companies worried about its impact on their ability to do business in the world’s second-largest economy.
Passed in November last year, the law is largely aimed at protecting China’s networks and private user information at a time when the WannaCry ransomware attack showed any country can be vulnerable to cyberthreats.
However, companies have pleaded with the government to delay the legislation’s implementation amid concerns about unclear provisions and how the law would affect personal information and cloud computing.
The government appears to still be scrambling to finalize the rules.
Just two weeks ago, Zhao Zeliang (趙澤良), director-general of the Cyberspace Administration of China’s (CAC) cybersecurity bureau, gathered about 200 representatives from foreign and domestic companies and industry associations at the CAC’s new headquarters in Beijing.
The May 19 discussion centered on a draft of the rules for transferring personal data overseas, participants told reporters.
Attendees received an updated version of the document, as well as Zhao’s assurance that regulators would remove some of the language that had received strong objections, they said.
The new document, obtained by reporters, removed a contentious requirement for companies to store customers’ personal data in China.
However, concerns remain.
“The regulator is unprepared to enforce the law” and it is “very unlikely” anything will happen tomorrow, said one participant, who asked for anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.
That impression was only strengthened a few days after the meeting, when authorities issued 21 new draft documents describing national standards on topics from cloud computing to financial data. They are to be available for public comment until July 7.
More new drafts, including detailed guidelines on cross-border data transfers, were published on Saturday.
It is “crystal clear that the regulatory regime is evolving and does not simply switch on like a light June 1,” said Graham Webster, an expert on Sino-US relations at Yale Law School.
Beijing is “wrestling with legitimate challenges that every country faces, and ... much of the caution and ambiguity comes from a desire to get things right,” he said.
However, the process is causing “headaches for companies, Chinese and foreign alike,” Webster said.
China already has some of the world’s tightest controls over Internet content, but even some of its universities and gasoline stations were hit by the global ransomware attack this month.
The draft cybersecurity rules provided at the CAC meeting address only one part of the sweeping law.
The legislation also bans Internet users from publishing a wide variety of information, including anything that damages “national honor,” “disturbs economic or social order” or is aimed at “overthrowing the socialist system.”
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